


Throw Pillows Not Shiruken

by Aris Merquoni (ArisTGD)



Category: Ninja Assassin (2009)
Genre: Curtain Fic, F/M, Relationship Problems Solved With Ninjitsu, Yuletide, Yuletide 2013
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 13:02:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArisTGD/pseuds/Aris%20Merquoni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mika and Raizo have a few bumps to negotiate on the road to a successful relationship future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Throw Pillows Not Shiruken

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lalaietha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/gifts).



The first time she and Raizo made love, he discovered within minutes how to make her come, but he never got hard.

"It's okay," she said afterwards, in the sticky high-summer Berlin heat permeating her apartment. "I... don't know if you know this cliche, but it happens to a lot--"

"It is hard for me to relax certain parts of my training," he cut her off. "Even though I know the Ozunu clan is gone."

They were lying side by side; her on her back on a sheet gone tacky with sweat, him curled on his side beside her, almost touching but not quite. She shifted and curled up face to face with him, reached out and ran her fingers along the curves of his wrist, his hand. "What do you mean?"

"We were taught that our bodies' physical needs made us weak." Raizo turned his hand palm-up under hers. "Hunger, thirst, desire... we were discouraged from seeking relief for any of these things."

"'Discouraged'?" Mika had learned quickly to understand that his polite euphemisms elided stories she didn't entirely want to hear.

This time he just smirked. "We were not beaten hard. But we were made into an example."

She shook her head. "I can't imagine that working on a bunch of thirteen-year-olds."

"It did not work as quickly as our other training." He hesitated. "But it worked. Eventually."

Mika ducked her head and tried not to think of generations of thirteen-year-old boys--and girls, beaten bloody until they didn't respond to their own bodies. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be." He gently squeezed her fingers. "I'm here with you."

"How can I help you?" she asked. "How can I undo what they did to you?"

"You cannot undo someone's past," Raizo said. He smiled again. "Besides, you've done so much. I will be fine."

Mika reached out and poked him in the chest. "You saved me from an evil ninja clan. I'm supposed to pay you back with orgasms. I will feel dishonored if I can't live up to my side of the deal."

"Very well," he said, still grinning. "We'll just have to work harder."

* * *

The first thing they did was buy a new apartment together.

When she'd moved to Berlin, Mika had picked a place that triangulated on work, transportation, and budget. She hadn't moved in the two years since. Raizo didn't dislike her apartment, exactly. He just spent half an hour every night checking the approaches and the windows and putting threads across the door.

So when she suggested they move into a different apartment, maybe someplace bigger, his face brightened. The following night, he spent seven or eight hours exploring the city, determining which apartment blocks had the best sight lines.

He was finally satisfied with a place slightly farther from downtown, slightly cheaper, with reinforced concrete walls. The architecture wasn't as nice, but the rooms were warm and snug and the landlord hands-off.

"Seriously?" Maslow asked when he first saw the place, which was incidentally after he'd helped haul her bed up three flights of stairs. "What was wrong with your old place, then?"

Mika gestured at Raizo, who was meticulously arranging her armchair. "Raizo thought it lacked... defensibility."

Ryan _wanted_ to argue with that, she could see it in his face, but he just shrugged. "You'd know, I suppose."

"This is much better," Raizo agreed.

"You couldn't have picked some lighter furniture, though?" Ryan asked ruefully, rubbing his neck. "Something it'd be easier to haul to the third floor without a lift?"

"Cheap furniture comes apart too easily," Mika answered promptly.

"It is more difficult to make a weapon out of heirloom-quality wood," Raizo added. Mika couldn't help smiling at him, and he smiled shyly back. "Though not impossible," he added, clearly planning a few moves of his own.

"... Okay, that was almost touching, and then terrifying," Ryan said. "I'm going to need help with the sofa, so if we can refrain from turning it into a melee weapon?"

Raizo bowed slightly. "I can handle that."

* * *

Furniture, she had. Raizo would have happily just slept on the floor, indeed found her bed overly soft for his tastes. Mika was not about to give up her mattress, though, so he curled up on her sheets and declared that a ninja could sleep anywhere.

The sex was still... good? Good for her, not for him.

"You okay?" She asked as he curled up away from her on the bed and breathed lightly in a way she'd learned to interpret as stressed. Well, as stressed as a ninja ever got, anyway.

"It is frustrating," he finally said, "that I can't make my body do what I want it to."

"... most people can't?" she tried to reassure him.

He shook his head. "I am Ozunu," he said definitively. "I can live without food, without heat, survive naked in rain, snow, desert heat... why can't I do this?"

Mika sat up and put her hand on his arm. "Maybe because 'being Ozunu' also meant getting beaten with sticks every time you thought about sex. Mabye you should try not being Ozunu instead?"

Raizo hesitated for a long moment. "The other clans are still out there. Until they are taken down--"

"Raizo, there are always going to be other clans or other dangers or I'll accidentally dig up something on--I don't know, a secret band of pirates that'll come after me. You can't let the Nine Clans keep ruling your life." She had pulled away to gesture irritably at the thought. Trying to control herself, she brought her hand back to stroke his hair, as gently as she could.

After a moment, he asked, "Pirates?"

"Well, it seemed as likely as ninjas, a few months ago," she said. "You got a problem with pirates?"

"I..." He sat up, suddenly, a sinewy statue of milky white jade in her own comfy bed. She was too busy for a moment admiring the view to realize what his tension meant. "Stay here."

"What--" she barely gasped, and then she was alone and Raizo had pulled the sickle-on-a-chain-thing--kusarigama, that was it--from behind his nightstand and rolled into the middle of the room. Naked.

She blinked, and suddenly there was fluid, shadowy movement, zipping around the bedroom from corner to corner. She lunged for the lamp on her nightstand, but as soon as she switched it on a sharp metal swish in the air hissed in front of her and the bulb exploded.

"Hey!" she shouted, angry instead of terrified, "That was my lamp!"

A soft thud and a harder crack of bone, and a limp but fully clothed ninja landed on her bed. This was not an improvement. Mika checked quickly to make sure that he--no, she--was unconscious and still breathing, then grabbed her robe and pulled it around her shoulders.

Another tendon-creaking sound, and a thud as Raizo and the other ninja landed in the middle of the floor, Raizo on top with his opponent's arm twisted up and out in a painful-looking lock.

"Which clan are you working for?" Raizo growled.

The ninja groaned in a deep register, but didn't say anything. Raizo jabbed his thumb into the man's neck. "Okay, okay!" he said. "We're from Kouga. We heard you'd gone rogue!"

Raizo smirked, then leaned down and murmured into the man's ear, "You heard right."

Another crack of bone on floor, and the Kouga ninja went limp. Mika crossed her arms and sighed.

Raizo stood and looked inquisitively at her.

"I take it back about the ninja attack," she said.

"I should put on some pants," he said. "Then we should turn them in to the authorities."

"In that order," she agreed.

Raizo smiled and turned to pick up his clothes.

Once the investigators from Europol had come to pick up their captives (and been reminded about the abilities of ninja to break captives out of custody), Raizo helped her pick up the broken glass and tidy the furniture back into place. He'd managed to avoid getting bloodstains all over everything, though the kusarigama had left a long gouge on the wall.

"So much for our deposit," Mika remarked as Raizu tucked it back behind the nightstand.

Raizo looked innocent. "I will try to only injure our furniture from now on."

She smirked. "I guess that's okay."

"Good." His eyes flicked over the room briefly, then he stepped closer to her and kissed her.

For a moment, she just reveled in the sensation, drawing his body closer with her hands and luxuriating in the feeling of his fingers in her hair. Then she pulled away. "Hey, what's up?"

"I just thought," he said, "that we could continue where we left off, before we were so rudely interrupted."

Mika laughed, startled. "Really? After having to rely on your Ozunu training to save our lives?"

"Well, now I know our apartment is defensible." He kissed her on the forehead. "And that our furniture can't be used against us." He kissed her on her left cheek. "And that even distracted," a kiss on her right cheek, "I can still protect us from any incursion." He tilted her chin up with his fingers and kissed her full on the mouth again.

"Mmmm," she agreed. "Now that all that is definitely true?"

"Maybe I can... spend some time being less Ozunu."

Mika grinned and put her arms around his neck. "Well, I'd say it's worth investigating."


End file.
